Anomaly
by Helenaxrobot
Summary: Post-Revolutions. As the Merovingian's daughter, Kezia gets anything she wants. As the Mechanic, she can fix anything she wants. Except him. SmithxOC. Rated for language and occasional violence, so far.
1. Chapter 1: Dissolved Girl

Anomaly

Summary: Post-Revolutions. As the Merovingian's daughter, Kezia gets anything she wants. As the Mechanic, she can fix anything she wants. Except him. SmithxOC, rated M for various naughtiness.

Disclaimer: I don't own the Matrix or any affiliated Wachowski machinations. I also don't own any of the soundtrack recommendations in the chapter titles.

AN: I won't be typing Mero's accent. Italics are thoughts. This is all post-Revolutions.

Chapter 1: Dissolved Girl

The Merovingian awoke with mixed feelings. Something was different about this morning, and the subtle knowledge tickled the edges of his frayed mind with mild dread and elation.

He checked his priorities. Lifting the silken sheets, he asserted a certain presence, and his wife-…well, partner program, by this point, slept still beside him, a warm beautiful bundle of code. _She_ was completely in order, he could tell; he had programmed her himself.

Suddenly, he swung his legs out of bed and crossed the room, pulling the double doors open and striding down the carpeted hall with the hastiness of realizing a nasty truth. Arriving at the end of the hall, he knocked on the plain wooden door loudly, anxiously awaiting an answer.

A muffled voice groaned from inside the room. The Merovingian sighed in relief. _Good. I was afraid that we had finally lost her._ He knew the day would come soon, especially for this one, but in truth, he had become rather fond of the girl, despite his best efforts to convince himself that she-…

_No. Don't think about that._ He wasn't a superstitious man, but he knew that the less he thought about it, the less likely it would slip. And should he slip, she would surely be lost.

The door opened with a click, disrupting his ruminations. He smiled down at the girl that emerged in a cami and shorts, blinking sleep away and patting at her short black hair, trying pitifully to tame the tangles. "…Whuutt," she mumbled, squinting against the hall light.

"I…wanted to check on you. Something's changed, but it hasn't affected us much."

Her brown eyes brightened with apprehension. "Wh-what's changed? About what? The matrix?"

"The code feels different. Nothing visible, but…" A thought dawned in his head. He waved the girl to the side and crossed her room, flinging open the curtains. She whined at the sudden sunlight, and he furrowed his brow at the city outside.

"What is it, Master Obi-vingian? Do you sense a disturbance in the Matrix?" the girl asked cheekily, mimicking a husky voice. The Merovingian tsked, not comprehending her reference, and gave a mirthless chuckle at the view outside.

"Looks like the boy succeeded after all."

"Who? Neo?" The girl padded softly over to the window, bare toes curling in the plush carpet. She knew of the recent disruptions regarding the so-called "One" and the certain rogue Agent, and last night's storm was abnormally electric. _Obviously I wasn't affected,_ she thought with a small smile, _I'm an exiled program. They wouldn't want to get at me._ The thought carried, instead of discomfort, a mild feeling of disdain for those bound either to the human lives or the Mainframe. But then again…"What about the Machines and the Mainframe?"

The Merovingian blinked and smiled at her in an overly cheerful way. "What about the Mainframe? Just because they stopped their petty human war doesn't mean our world will cease existing. The Agents will patrol as they always have, and the humans will continue to run amok and 'save' their little companions." The distaste in his voice laid a fine shimmering veneer over his soothing voice, and he smiled more naturally. "And we, Kezia dear, will keep doing what we do best."

Kezia shuddered, "Don't leer at me like that, Dad." The Merovingian's face fell. It seemed that after so many years of being pervy, he had forgotten how to smile normally. But Kezia gave a playful little smirk. "You're such a creep, Ole Wrinkly. Waking me up so friggin' early…Ugh. Imma go shower."

The Merovingian sighed, rubbing his temples to prevent himself from catching sight of Kezia's scantily-clad form. The child had aged, unlike himself, his wife, and the rest of the exiles, but luckily, she suspected nothing. Only he and Persephone knew of Kezia's true origin.

* * *

><p>It had all been because of his stupid woman. Stupid Persephone and her stupid whims.<p>

The mission had been like any other. They met a prospective customer at an underground rave club, speaking in low tones that rumbled just above the blasting bass. The deal compromised had been extremely lucrative, obtaining certain databases that the Merovingian had expounded upon greatly during the following decade.

The customer had already left, and he and his wife were enjoying a moment to revel in the success. The Twins stood stoically nearby, in the early days when they were too tense to sit, emanating waves of power that attracted an amusing bunch of dancing females. The Merovingian's lip curled at their obvious discomfort, and Persephone allowed herself a rare smile.

A scrawny Asian girl, no older than five, was collecting the tall glasses in front of them in preparation for the arriving celebratory drinks. Grabbing the last couple in an awkward hug, she hurried off through the legs of various ravers. The Merovingian sneered inwardly at the child's ragged, stained dress. He needed no labor to live this way; his suits were hand-coded, with the accompanying feeling of power and accomplishment. With skill came power, and with power came money.

He looked up, and a scene played out before him. The girl, scurrying about with arms full of glasses, bumped into the slim sheathed legs of the waitress bringing the new round of drinks, and she stumbled against the crowd, sloshing colorful liquors into the disastrous direction of the Twins.

The two albinos stopped themselves from phasing out at the last moment, remembering their surroundings. And so their immaculate white trenchcoats were splattered with various cocktails. They looked at each other, a faint flickering of rage passing their faces. And then, with a wicked smile, both drew out a slim straight razor and flicked it open with a twirl, ignoring the stuttering of the waitress as she backed off and heading menacingly towards the little girl, who was attempting to scoop a broken dropped glass into a pile to sweep away.

She saw her own reflection, dirty tan skin and unkempt black hair a blur, in Twin One's polished white shoe, and looked up to see her face in clearer definition in the switchblade. With a cry, she dropped the rest of the glasses and began to step warily backwards. Her eyes darted back and forth with experience from the streets, looking for an escape but finding none. And then her back met the Merovingian's knees. He looked down at her, mildly disgusted.

The Twins crouched down in front of her, blades glinting under the neon lights. "Well, aren't you a clumsy little one." "We don't appreciate the new color on our coats, do we?" "No, we don't. You might find _we_ get a little clumsy too, with these pretties…" they droned, smiling still at the girl's agitation.

"N-no, please, I can fix it, I can fix it," she whimpered, attempting vainly to back up more. Twin Two pushed his blade to her sun-bronzed skin, cocking a pale eyebrow in amused haughtiness. "Really, I-I can fix it, please, let me…"

"Wait." Persephone stood, towering over the scared girl in her stilettos. "Love, hold her." The Merovingian grimaced and locked a hand around the girl's skinny wrist.

_So fragile. She won't run. I could break this now if I wanted._

"Let her try and…fix things, if she can. I am…intrigued." Persephone was a program; what she felt was not pity. But she could tell this girl was not the stupid sort; she wouldn't claim something if she could not do it.

The girl looked up with watery brown eyes, trembling in fear and nervousness. She nodded shakily and looked hard at Twin Two's jacket. And within a moment, the color on the blankness was bleeding away, dripping harmlessly to the floor, receding unnaturally, in lines and layers rather than droplets. Both Twins stood abruptly, surprised. When Twin Two's coat was returned to normal, the girl focused instead on Twin One, whose damage was repaired identically. Twin Two fingered his jacket, muttering to himself, "Not even wet…"

The Merovingian turned the little girl roughly around and was scrutinizing her. "How did you do that, girl, tell me." The girl was very much human, he knew. But what she did was highly advanced programming, nothing a little brat in a nightclub was capable of.

"I…" She looked uncomfortable. "..I'm a freak. I just fix things."

"No," Persephone told her. "What you did was very powerful, and impressive." The girl seemed a little heartened, and blushed.

"If I look hard, I can…read things, y'know? It's all green and letters, and I see what's been changed, and I just kind of pull it away and put it back how it was. It's kinda hard to explain, but I just…I just _know_ how to fix it." The Merovingian's brow furrowed. He had a hard time believing the girl could read Code, much less manipulate it. The Oracle would have collected her by now. _But I guess even that bothersome woman has to let some slip through the cracks._

"Darling?" Persephone ventured. The girl looked up at her. "How would you like to…come live with us?" The Merovingian whipped his head around to look at his wife, his expression matching the little girl's in surprise.

"Woman…" he hissed at her. _What is she thinking?_ But Persephone shot him the look, the one with the raised eyebrow, the one that said, _I know what I'm doing, and I know what I want, do you dare stop me?_

And Mainframe be damned, that look was both incredibly confident and incredibly sexy.

He rolled his eyes at his wife, and gave a little "Tch!" Standing, he gestured to the Twins, who walked towards the entrance and effortlessly parted the crowd. The Merovingian threw one last contemptuous glance at the girl clutching Persephone's dress hem, and turned to walk out. Persephone smiled down at the little girl, knowing that the girl knew that anything was better than how she lived now.

"What is your name, little one?"

"I don't know. I never had one, Ma'am."

"Hm, Don't call me that. It makes me feel old. Just Persephone is fine." She wondered what to call the little one. She was like an undo function for the Matrix. Ctrl-Z. "Control z…control zee…C Z.., no, K Z. Casey is too plain…"And a memory of a song, faint like a first kiss, floated into her head.

"Kezia. Your name is Kezia." And so the Merovingian had a daughter.

* * *

><p>The shower stopped running, and the Merovingian brought himself out of his memories. They had induced the girl to forget she was adopted, and treated her like an Exile program, to keep her from being sensed by the Agents. In the past fourteen years, he had become inordinately fond of the girl, teaching her how to read the code in edits and layers, so that she could revert anything back to whichever version of code she chose. But her powers, they found, were limited as well; she could revert only inorganic things to previous versions of code, as well as herself. Hence, her alias became the Mechanic.<p>

The Merovingian felt that this day should be set aside, for him to be alone. There was a lot of work left to do, now that things had changed between the humans and Machines. "Kezia?" he barked at the bathroom door.

The girl popped her head out, a towel draped over her shoulders. "Yeah?"

"Listen…why don't you take Luke and the Twins and run an errand for me?"

Kezia grinned. "Okay, sure." She loved running her father's errands.

* * *

><p>AN: So there's the first chapter. A bit slow, but I tried to get the intro stuff out of the way. Unlike my other phaile fanfics, I've got the entire storyline for this planned out. I plan to update every month or so, as college allows. Please review; if I don't meet a quota, I probably won't bother continuing.<p> 


	2. Chapter 2: Arterial Black

Anomaly

Summary: Post-Revolutions. As the Merovingian's daughter, Kezia gets anything she wants. As the Mechanic, she can fix anything she wants. Except him. SmithxOC, rated M for various naughtiness.

Disclaimer: I don't own the Matrix or any affiliated Wachowski machinations. I also don't own any of the soundtrack recommendations in the chapter titles. Just my OCs and the freaky storyline.

AN: Thanks for the reviews, it's really encouraging to hear feedback, and here are replies to your reviews.

**Digital Angel: **I figured for the age difference, though Kezia is about 18-19, Smith is an Agent, ageless and as old as the Matrix in his incarnations. So though it's a bit creepy, he'll be starting over too, though he will forever remain in the predetermined form of a 40 year old man, because that's what he's been programmed to look like.

**Dannypoo: **I C what U did thar. Your entire review reads like an inside joke, darling (but one that I enjoy!). Thanks for the review, and I hope you will keep up with this fic,

**Tigerman:** As you wish, time has indeed been found. :] But "the rest" will play out over probably at least 8 more chapters. All I have is a skeleton of a plot, some writing skills, and an ever-present laptop. Thanks for reviewing and reading!

* * *

><p>Chapter 2: Arterial Black<p>

Kezia didn't appreciate cars, but the fact remained that walking through the shady parts of town with a pair of albinos and a black guy who looked like he was a walking funeral wasn't the best way for a group of Exiles to travel discreetly. Not to mention the streets were still potholed with puddles from last night's storm. But the tinted windows of the luxury sedan didn't give the gorgeous new sky justice, and all she could really think about was the pollutants spewing from the tailpipe and what they were doing to the atmosphere. It took Luke tapping on her shoulder to make her remember that it wasn't a real sky, and it wasn't a real car.

"Hey." She turned around, looking Luke in the eyes, eyes with an age that betrayed his twenty-something face. "You okay?"

"Yeah, I guess." He always knew if something was up. Kezia had known the Exile for as long as she could remember. "Everybody's code is kinda funny," she remarked, squinting out the window. "Like they've changed versions. But it's not an upgrade, it's an older version."

"Makes sense. Smith copied himself onto nearly everybody. Now that he's gone, they've reverted to how they were before all that business." The girl nodded absentmindedly at his explanation, and Luke sighed, wrapping an arm around her shoulder and pulling her to him. "Listen, we can go for ice cream after this. How's that sound?"

Kezia brightened. Luke was the only one who put up with her strange attraction to human foods. The Twins saw eating as troublesome, and her parents rarely took her out to eat. "Sure, okay. Sounds delish. " Suddenly, she wanted the errand to be over.

Luke gave a low laugh at her eager face. "You can even pick up a pastry and some yogurt on the way back." The girl gave a little "yay!" of appreciation, and Luke smiled in amusement. _I've spoiled her rotten._

* * *

><p>"We're here," Twin One announced in a monotone. Twin Two stopped the car, and the two in the backseat unbuckled their seatbelts. Kezia slipped on a pair of sleek mirrored shades before stepping out of the car into the bright sunlight, straightening out her shirt and jean shorts, gun holstered and tucked discreetly into an oversized pocket. Luke followed her out of the car, black sunglasses matching his jacket and the rest of his outfit. Of the four, Kezia was the only one without a leather trench, and at most, she looked like a random Asian college student on summer break. But then, she had always felt a little different from the rest of the Merovingian's henchmen.<p>

_Must be because I'm his kid,_ she thought, wondering still how it would affect anything. _But no matter. _The four of them ducked into a darkened alleyway.

"We'll take the front. You two get the back." Kezia and Luke nodded, making their way to the fire escape as the Twins went to enter the apartment complex from the front. Luke motioned to the third floor, and then stepped into the shadows, blending in effortlessly and reappearing on the fire escape platform for the third floor complex.

Kezia sighed. She always had to do things the hard way. Reaching up to grab the lowest rung, she stepped against the wall and maneuvered herself onto the ladder, ascending nimbly with minimal noise. Luke gave her a hand up to the last platform. "Do your thing."

"'Kay," she whispered. With a touch to the frame of her shades, the lenses turned clear, and she stared hard at the lock, reading back through the versions of the code. Finding it at 45 days, 2 hours, and 12 minutes ago, she reverted to that design, recoding the lock to be open, noiseless except for the quiet static that signified a manipulation of Matrix code. Another touch to her shades turned them back to their mirrored black.

"Good girl. Ready?" Kezia nodded, pulling her gun out gently to mirror Luke's actions. "Let's go."

He kicked open the door with a crash and immediately merged with the shadows of the darkened room. Kezia stalked in, gun pointed at the startled man who hastily scrambled to exit the windows on his computer.

"Leave it," Kezia commanded, her voice cold, and cocked the gun. The man froze and lifted his hands over his head in surrender.

"Wh-what do you want? Are you a g-gov guy? –uh, girl? …uh, I've paid all my taxes…" She cocked an eyebrow at the pale fat man's bumbling, stepping towards him as he stepped backwards towards the wardrobe against the wall.

"I think you know what you've done. I'm representing a very powerful man, someone who presented you with a task a few weeks back." Sweat beaded on his flat nose as recognition and fear appeared in his eyes. "And you failed quite spectacularly, yet you kept the pay. I'd hardly call that fair practice, would you?" He continued backing up, but Kezia felt like she was missing something. Something about his steps weren't quite random, and he wasn't heading for the door like she expected.

Her eyes widened in realization, and the man yelled, "NOW!" A crash sounded to her left, and she turned towards the noise as another man barreled out from the wardrobe with a knife, tackling her to the ground. Her gun went flying, and the man plunged the knife into her stomach, pinning her through to the floor. With a roar that matched her scream, Luke bolted out of the shadows and delivered a calculated shot to the man's temple, spraying Kezia with blood and brains as the man toppled off her body, and earning another pained hiss as his hand, slow on releasing the handle as he fell, wrenched the knife sideways in her abdomen.

The other man scrambled for the door, but was met by the Twins as they phased through. "Oh-oh God, what are you?" he whispered, horrified. The Twins simply smirked and flicked out their razors, making short work of his neck. Twin One grabbed Luke's discarded gun and placed it in the man's hand before heading over to join Luke and Twin Two by Kezia.

"You took your sweet time," Luke muttered to the Twins, then turned his attention back to the girl in his arms. "Breathe," he told her as he swiftly pulled out the knife with a gloved hand and handed it to One to plant in the other man's hand. Kezia let out a strangled cry, hands fluttering weakly to her stomach in pain, only to pull away at the sticky blood. "Concentrate. You've done this before."

"Fuckfuckfuckfuck…" Kezia closed her eyes and grimaced, breathing hard while trying to keep from moving anything but her diaphragm and ribs. Luke slapped her face gently, and she glared up at him. "Keep your eyes open. Concentrate. Come on, do it!"

"Alright, alright, geez, don't hit me," she panted breathily, looking down at her wound and knitting her brow. In her mind's eye, she saw the numbers and characters flashing green seconds and minutes, and stopped at a leisurely seven minutes ago exactly, for good measure. _Less than seven minutes? Feels like a lifetime of this pain…_But she shook her head almost imperceptibly and concentrated on reverting her body back to the version of code from that time, plugging and pulling values and variables, renaming classes and closing brackets.

She felt the pain lessen then give a sharp burst as the blood siphoned off her clothes and back into her veins and arteries, her organs knitting back together from the inside, reversing the stab, finishing with the last layer of skin that closed up neatly.

She barely had time to revert her shirt back to an unripped version. And then came the inevitable blankness that coursed through her brain, erasing her thoughts, and she opened her eyes as Kezia from exactly seven minutes ago.

She sat up suddenly and went rigid, feeling the adrenaline and tension that charged through her body as she had entered the room. But why was she was sitting down, with Luke and the Twins around her. That meant…"What happened this time?"

Luke looked at her understandingly. "You were stabbed by him," he indicated the man with a bloody mess for a face, "while you were going after him," he indicated the man dead by the door, "but we three took care of that." The briefing was protocol; every time she reverted back to a version of herself, she lost any memories that happened after that version. But this had been the first time she was so seriously wounded, the first time she had become incapacitated for most of the mission. Luke could tell she was bothered by this as well, but the look in her eyes told him she wanted to save it for later.

The Twins gave each other a sideways glance. _There is something wrong. / We know. / Does she know about- / No. / We will have to go to him at the / Meeting scheduled for tomorrow. We will tell him then. _The telepathic conversation finished, two pairs of identical green eyes blinked behind mirrored shades, and the Twins stood up."We are done here." "We believe you mentioned other activities following?"

Kezia flapped her hands happily and beamed. "Ice cream!" Luke gave a disbelieving laugh, and helped her up. The Twins simply smiled wryly.

"We will leave you to that then. Call when you are done." With that, the two albinos phased out the fire escape door and presumably descended to the waiting car below. Kezia surveyed the mess of the room, found and holstered her gun, and picked her way back towards the fire escape, where Luke waited for her.

She reassembled and locked the door with a hard stare after they stepped out, and she remirrored her shades, closing her eyes wearily for a moment before heading down the ladders, sticking her tongue out at Luke and his shadow transporting. Luke's dark brown skin seemed to absorb the sunlight as he stepped out of the shadows, smiling at the familiar thump of Kezia's boots as she jumped off the last ladder and hugged him around the middle. She handed him her gun, glad to be rid of it. The two peeked around the corner and then headed out of the alley and down the street towards a brightly colored pavilion.

* * *

><p>The stoplight was red, and Luke and Kezia waited at the sidewalk before the zebra lines, standing awkwardly amidst other pedestrians. In an effort to look anywhere but somebody else's eyes, Kezia found herself staring curiously into a darkened alley to her right.<p>

The early afternoon sun infiltrated the shadows there, and she made out the shine of a black dress shoe attached to a leg clothed with what looked like expensive slacks. Following up the leg, she saw a businessman slumped against the wall and a trash can, a pair of broken sunglasses dangling off one ear. "Probably a hangover," she remarked darkly with a smirk.

As if he had heard her, the man's eyes opened to reveal a startling blue, and Kezia narrowed her eyes at him. No hungover businessman had ever looked at her with such disdain.

"Oh, God." Luke looked down in surprise at the non-religious girl. She began walking towards the alley and he had no choice but to follow her, grabbing her wrist and ignoring the stares of bewildered pedestrians.

"Kezia, what are you- No. No no no no. Hell no."

"Shut up!" she hissed. Luke brought his hand up to cover his eyes. _Why couldn't she be a normal Exile for once? _

Tentatively, Kezia approached the stirring man and waved a hand in front of his eyes. "Hello? Hi, Mister Agent Man. Smith, right?"

His hand shot out and grabbed her wrist, and she winced in pain. He removed his shattered sunglasses with his other hand and scrutinized her, eyes narrowing with each passing second. _Why can't I read her? What happened? Where is Mr. Anderson…_ "Mr. Anderson…NO." Kezia winced again as his hand began tightening more on her wrist. "No. Impossible. He…he…" Smith snarled, unable to express his rage. He took a breath, but the sound of a cocking gun made him pause.

"Stop," Luke commanded, staring down the Agent behind black shades. He had Kezia's gun aimed at Smith's head, arm unwavering. "Let go of her." Smith gave a humorless smirk that faded abruptly as everything came flooding back.

_Loss. Control. Rain. Fighting gravity, Mr. Anderson's persistence, the gravel cracking under the force. And the pain, bursting from every shattered cell in his body, every corrupt quantum dissolving, losing purpose, losing control. _

He opened his eyes and he was choking on air, the unforgiving grey concrete cutting crumbs in his hands as he stared down on all fours, feeling like a stranger in his own programmed shell. The inexplicable, disturbingly _human_ sensation of nausea swirled in what he supposed was his "stomach", and was halted only by the appearance of a pair of scuffed black leather boots that broke the sea of grey in his line of vision. He followed them up and saw the unremarkable brown eyes of that infuriating Asian girl, the one who had recognized him as he stared out of the alley.

She was crouched in front of him, one hand's fingers tapping nervously on her knee. "Listen, whatever went on just then, it's over. The war in the real world is even over. You fought, you lost, you're an Exile now, like us." He brought himself up into a crouch, mirroring her, a scowl on his face.

_Like __them__? _He couldn't stand his defeat thrown at him like this, from a child, from a _virus_. His mind blanked with fury.

Silently, he stood up and straightened his suit with a curt tug, movements stiff from controlling the violent anger inside him. He reached for his gun. His fingers met emptiness under his suit jacket, and he looked down slowly at the vacancy before returning his gaze to the Asian girl, tilting his head ever so slightly to the left.

She bit her lip under his gaze. Luke kept his gun aimed, still hesitant and unable to comprehend why Kezia wasn't leaving. And then he saw her give the smile. That smile was the one she used when she was tempting a stray cat or cooing at a small child. Full of hope and sunshine, so feminine despite her personality. _And_, he reminded himself, _That was the smile she used to flirt. _He had only seen her flirt on the rare occasion, and only ever as a part of the Merovingian's plans, never on her own. Today was a day of firsts, it seemed.

"Smith?" she asked timidly. He continued glaring at her. "Would…Do you wanna go out for ice cream with us?"

Luke nearly fell over in shock, and it seemed Smith was likely to do the same. His mouth curled in a frown in obvious distaste. "I have no desire to accompany you for _sweets_." The way he spat out the word made Kezia cringe, and the smile faded, to be replaced with a sardonic smirk.

"It's not like you have much else to do. Are you gonna wait here to die? Or just mope around?" Her eyes lit up at some terribly hilarious mental image. "Are you gonna apply for a job? It's not like your resume is super good. 'Skills: Glaring, Shooting, Fighting, Getting pwned by Neo.'"

Smith's jaw clenched, causing a vein to twitch on his forehead. _Why did this girl persist?_ But he was in no position for a confrontation now. He turned to leave.

Kezia's mind raced. For some reason, the same reason she awoke with apprehension, she had to keep him here. "Wait!"

"…" He stopped, not turning. She took this as a sign to continue, and she told him the only thing she knew would make him stay, appeal to his drive for purpose, for control.

"Neo's here. I can get you to him."

Nobody moved. But she knew it had worked. After a beat, Luke put his gun down, give Kezia an odd look, but she shot back a glare, shaking her head.

Smith interrupted, turning around with something akin to confusion. "He's dead. The war is over; he must be."

"But so were you," Kezia returned. "And you're back. Not quite who you were before, but you're definitely not dead."

"And tell me, girl-"

"Kezia."

He ignored her. "How can you be so definite?"

_Ah_. The ugly truth. "I'm the Merovingian's daughter."

The questions built up in Smith's head. Before he could voice them, though, Kezia set a stipulation. "But you have to come get ice cream with me!" Smith couldn't begin to understand her strange obsession with him and human iced confections. But if what she said was true, if she could really get him to Mr. Anderson, he could reverse the human's victory, which he was sure had been a flaw, a bug in the code.

He tossed his broken sunglasses into a nearby trash can, and followed the two out of the alley, steps heavy and measured in resignation.

* * *

><p>Kezia's momentary elation had given way to a mild panic. Her bluff had been simple, but there was no way around its simplicity. She had no idea of knowing if Neo was even alive, much less if she had access to him. But at least the Agent was momentarily stripped of weapons and, from the looks of it, some powers, if he had been willing to trust an Exile. She took off her shades to order a mango sorbet. Today didn't seem like a creamy sort of day for her.<p>

Luke opted for a milkshake, and Smith seemed entirely at a loss. Kezia smiled sneakily. Vanilla would probably be too sweet for him, and he didn't seem like a fruit person, ruling out fruit ice creams and sorbet.

He didn't seem to be speaking any time soon. And so she stepped up and ordered a basic scoop of chocolate, in a bowl, not cone. No frills, just ice cream, to see how he liked it. She knew of his hatred for humans, but she wanted him to accept, for some reason, that not everything about humans was bad.

Clutching their iced treats, they headed outside to the patio. Kezia giggled at seeing Smith pinch a delicate little plastic spoon in fingers that had pulled triggers to end a hundred lives.

"What is it, Miss…?" he asked menacingly. She toned her giggles down to a discreet smile.

"Ah, nothing. And it's Smith, coincidentally, Kezia Smith." The agent quirked an eyebrow coolly. Kezia gave a little smirk, catching his eye for a little longer than intended. The last name meant nothing to her; it was the name that the Merovingian and Persephone all used when out, to avoid tracking.

The sun was bright outside, and Luke ducked quickly into the small shade of an umbrella at the table. Kezia noticed Smith's obvious discomfort. _He's used to having sunglasses. All the Agents are. They look like they'd kill you with a glare if you broke their glasses_. She remembered her first time seeing this, and scoffed lightly at the ridiculousness. "Here," she piped, removing her shades from her pocket and holding them out to Smith. He stopped squinting to accept them, with some hesitation, and once again raised an eyebrow.

Kezia smirked and mirrored his expression, brown eyes dancing with a mischievous light. Smith scowled and sat down stiffly. Kezia flopped down easily onto one of the simple plastic chairs, familiar from frequenting this particular parlor.

She took a spoon of sorbet into her mouth, watching Smith taste his ice cream disdainfully. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she was howling in amusement at the situation: Two Exiles and the most dangerous ex-Agent eating ice cream together on a sunlit patio. But in the present consciousness, she simply smiled. "Why do you do it like that?"

Smith stopped mid-spoon, looking at her with a scowl while he removed the now-empty spoon. She suppressed another giggle.

"You do it all like a robot. The sitting, the eating. Even your expressions are the same each time. Like a machine."

This time, Smith smirked. "I _am_, after all, a Program. Created by the Machines, but now…_an Exile, like you._" His uncanny imitation of her earlier words made her shoulders curl up defensively, and she offered a wan smile before returning to her sorbet. _Looks like he's less human than I thought. _She swirled a bit of mango flavor around in her mouth. _But I always had a thing for Machines._ A slight blush crept high on her cheekbones when she remembered her first crush on the Twins. That, too, had had an aspect of fear in the admiration.

_Wait._ Crush? Where had that come from? Smith could destroy her without blinking. There was no crush here. She simply wanted to…help him. Yes, that was it. He needed help, and nobody else would offer it but her.

Smith broke the tense silence. He stabbed his spoon into his ice cream and gripped the arms of the chair carefully. Kezia felt intimidated, but continued eating her sorbet nonchalantly, willing herself to keep calm. "Miss Smith. You haven't fulfilled your end of this agreement yet."

Kezia nodded whimsically, leaning back with the bowl in her hands. "Yeah, well, Neo's back. I don't know how, don't ask me, and I don't know where. But as you know, my father is a pretty powerful man here in the Matrix. I'm sure I could dig up something from him." She tried from saying anything definite. "You know him and his obsession with knowing everything about everyone."

"You're stalling, Miss Smith." Kezia gave a little choking cough at his blunt appraisal. _How did he know?_ "You don't actually know anything about Mr. Anderson. Lying is a dangerous path to elect, virus child."

"I-…I'm not lying. And I'm not a child! Or a virus," she snapped bitterly, immediately regretting it as Smith stood up abruptly. His violent movement upended the fragile bowl of ice cream, sending a rivulet dripping into Kezia's lap. Without thinking, she immediately reversed its flow back into the bowl, cleaning off her shorts with another focused stare.

"Uh…K?" She looked up at Luke, then suddenly whipped her head around at Smith, horrified. All pretenses now gone, she had revealed herself to him as another one of those Exiles with strange powers. _A freak._ Something she hadn't called herself in forever, a name that bubbled up from the darkest parts of her memory with a vengeance.

Smith scrutinized her behind dark glasses. _An Exile, but no ordinary one. But she acts like one of those disgusting viruses. She has achieved a level of humanity unprecedented in a Program. Yet she reads and manipulates code like one of the Machines. Strange . _He could not help the interest that sparked in him, a remnant of his days as interrogator for the Agents. He wanted to investigate further, but that was not his purpose at the moment.

"Miss Smith, this meeting has been most unproductive." He straightened his suit jacket out with a tug. "It is in your interest that we do not meet again." He spoke the words with a slow calm that belied the threat, and walked away with measured steps, easily disappearing into the crowd.

Kezia swallowed hard, and Luke slurped unconsciously, not noticing that his milkshake was finished. Neither of them spoke a word, rattled, and Kezia finished her sorbet quickly.

As they stood up to leave, she suddenly stomped her foot down hard on the cobbled patio. Luke turned to see her looking bitterly against the sun in the direction that Smith had walked off in.

"Damn. Fucker took my shades."

* * *

><p>AN: Well, that was about twice as long as I expected it to be. Still slow, though; it's so hard to write dialogue for Smith, especially since dialogue is my weak point. I hope it wasn't too run-onfluffy/dense. And I hope I stayed in character and kept from making a Mary Sue. I hope you enjoyed reading nonetheless! Please review!


	3. Chapter 3: Just

**Anomaly**

Disclaimer: I don't own the Matrix or any affiliated Wachowski machinations. I also don't own any of the soundtrack recommendations in the chapter titles. Only my OCs and this phaileplot.

AN: I won't be typing Mero's accent. Italics are thoughts. This is all post-Revolutions.

Replies to some reviews:

**Digital Angel**: Yay, a return reader! Thank you so much for your detailed review. I've tried to limit myself a bit more now, and I've done a little more research on Smith outside of my (admittedly fuzzy) memories from watching the Trilogy. I'll have to go back and watch them again, to catch Weaving's portrayal subtleties. I know how ridiculous the situation was, and K and Smith were hyperaware as well. But at the moment, he really can't do anything, unarmed and stripped of his Agent powers, so he was following any and all leads. I'll go a bit more philosophical this chapter, channeling, and hopefully the plot will become a bit clearer. And I don't think K can help the attraction; she is a human teenage girl, after all, despite her memories and "parents".

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><p><strong>Chapter 3: Just<strong>

The Merovingian was, to put it mildly, pissed. The confusing news about the return of the anomalous agent, Smith, and rumors about Neo being reincarnated were added frustrations and unanswered questions, compounded by the news that the Twins returned with about his daughter.

The Twins followed the Merovingian up the vast staircase to the second level of his chateau. The conference room was lush but prim, and Persephone sat at one of the chairs at the far end, perfectly manicured nails drumming a four-part staccato on the mahogany table. She pushed her chair back and made an effort to stand when her husband program and the Twins swept into the room, but the Merovingian waved her to sit down again. The four assembled after locking the door, and Persephone leaned into the table in concern.

"Kezia…is she alright? She returned yesterday rather quiet."

"We have no reason to worry for her physical health." "But as for matters of the mind, we realize her lapse may indicate" "An awakening of sorts." The Merovingian stiffened visibly, and disquiet opened cracks in Persephone's carefully crafted veneer.

_Poor child._ He knew she was getting better at manipulating code; it was almost like second nature to her by now, a reflex rather than pure response like it had been when they first met. But each time she read herself, she risked going deeper. One day, she would reach her core, he feared, and find that hers was so different from those of the Twins and Luke. She would find it like those of the humans she so often watched and dissected with her mind's eye, and being the bright child she was, she would assume truth.

"So, her days are numbered, as her kind would say?" Persephone closed her eyes at her husband's words.

The Twins nodded affirmatives. "We would believe so. At the normal rate of human introspection" "She should reach her core in approximately twenty years" "Given her propensity for isolation." "However, the damage obtained on various missions" "And the subsequent need to heal" "May hasten this process to the span of a few years." "Maybe briefer."

"O-only a few years?" Persephone whispered. To her, this was but a blink compared to her lifetime since the Second Matrix.

"It is inevitable, darling," the Merovingian drawled. "We treated her as an Exile; it necessarily follows that she will awaken."

Persephone ignored his comforting hand on her back, porcelain brow knitted sternly in thought. "Is it possible to keep her? We did once, six years ago…" The couple smiled weakly, remembering Kezia's existential crisis that comprised her teenage angst. It had been the first time the Merovingian felt the urgent need to protect the child, and he supposed that had been how Kandra had felt when he urged him to protect Sati.

True, it wasn't as if Kezia was going to be put up for deletion, but the fact remained that redpills were generally targeted in the Matrix. "It's possible, yes. But it only delays her eventual awakening. And if she does find a way to return, her chances of survival are again diminished, due to both her status as simulacra and her…questionable connections."

"But isn't there a way to…shield her from seeing her core? Or perhaps after the awakening, if she chooses to stay-"

"Woman, there _is no choice_. She is a human who can read the Matrix; she will awaken to this fact. She cannot remain like those bumbling sheep who escape awakening only to die. And the nerve of you to mention _choice_, of all things, when you know full well that the nature of causality prevents a return to normalcy." But for a moment, he sincerely wished he could believe that infernal woman's infantile hopes. And thoughts of another infernal woman who believed in choice interrupted his thoughts.

"The Oracle wishes an audience with our daughter." Persephone shook her head in confusion. The Merovingian was visibly irritated as well by this fact. "You two will take her. Do not take the darkmage; bring her only to the Oracle and straight back." The Twins nodded again in understanding. "We cannot afford to cause more damage while that woman plays her silly games."

The Virii stood silently and left the room. Persephone watched the doors close, and turned back to her troubled husband.

"Kezia needs to know," she murmured, stretching a rare sympathetic hand towards the Merovingian's trembling fist. With a scowl, he slapped her hand away,

"The child needs to know nothing. She may know too much already." He knew the delicate nature of information and truth, and the between blur of discretion. The inherent risks were far too many, and her status as his assumed child only complicated matters.

Persephone stood, smoothing out her dress. "There is still time. I can only pray, to what gods there are, that you make good use of it." Her voice was bitter like his outlook, and she stalked away from the man at the table, who buried his face in his hands.

* * *

><p>The creak and clang of the iron door opening only caused Kezia to grimace and tighten the current screw more furiously with her screwdriver. Her grip was tainted with sweat, and beads of perspiration dripped down her forehead and nose, wetting her black wifebeater and dampening the black leather of the motorcycle seat. With her hair up messily and camo cargo pants slung dangerously low on her barely-there hips, she imagined herself a sorry sight for the intruder. <em>And that is why I like to work here alone. <em>

The intruder cleared his throat. She ignored it, and proceeded to select a socket wrench fitting and crescent wrench to tighten a bolt. The clicks of the ratcheting tapped along the void of conversation.

"Kezia." She registered the Twin's warning, but finished her current bolt before straightening wearily on the seat of the motorcycle, closing her eyes and breathing deep. Opening them, she put the tools back on the nearby bench and wiped her face carelessly with grease-stained fingers, flicking away the sweat and glaring at the albinos from her Suzuki throne.

"What."

Twin Two shifted uncomfortably at her obvious annoyance, but Twin One simply pressed his lips a bit thinner. "We are to accompany you to the Oracle. She has…" "requested an audience."

Kezia wiped her hands on her pants, and gestured the Twins to go on, impatiently. _And I care why…?_

Twin One relented. "Look here, love, it shouldn't take long. We will take you there and back, no detours." Kezia rolled her eyes, but sighed and descended across the diamond plate steel platform. A noticeably irritated expression marred her face as she grabbed her wallet and jacket and made a futile effort to rearrange her hair into a more respectably feminine style.

As they headed towards the door, Twin Two paused and wiped a streak of grease off of Kezia's cheek, turning back around and following his Twin out the door, missing the girl's momentary blush.

* * *

><p>The ride to the Oracle's building was an awkward one for Kezia. As she stared at the backs of the Twins' heads, she cursed her cardboard-box figure. <em>No hips, no cleavage canyon, and a butt that's good, but doesn't make up for everything else. If only I had inherited some of Persephone's curves.<em> The world outside her workshop was only a comfort when she was alone. She could watch the humans, but knowing that somebody was watching her…that made her uncomfortable. The standards of beauty had wormed their way into her mind, and there were times when she felt utterly a failure as an Exile. _Maybe I could ask my dad for a reprogrammed skin…_

Twin Two cleared his throat and looked back from the passenger seat. "Kezia?" She looked up with a placid expression that masked her thoughts. "Why do you insist on working on those machines? You could fix their code far more easily, and it would save time as well."

Kezia looked to the side thoughtfully. "I dunno. It's what I like to do. Manipulating code is fun and all, and it's quick and easy. But there's something different about holding the metal and fitting the parts together, soldering those wires and tightening screws with your own hands, trying to see past the fog on your goggles and getting your arms sore and dirty. It makes me feel like I've actually achieved something, fixed it, made it better, with my own skills alone." She gestured with her hands as she spoke, tracing curves of imaginary steel and aluminum.

"Your role as the Mechanic is due to your skills as well." Twin Two looked confused, and Twin One looked at her curiously in the rearview mirror as well. Kezia sighed.

"Let's just say it's stress relief. It takes time, and I like spending that time in my element. I just…it's hard to explain." And she left it at that with a noncommittal shrug. It was so difficult sometimes to explain feelings. Her father similarly questioned why exactly she "insisted on tinkering in such a human way on machines", but Persephone seemed more receptive to Kezia's idiosyncracies.

Twin One twitched an apathetic eyebrow and returned his eyes to the road. Twin Two, however, gave Kezia a roguish smile and chirped in a good-natured, accented voice, "Weirdo."

Kezia made a face (ಠ_ಠ) and stuck out her tongue. _Somehow he even makes an insult sound good. Gah! What is wrong with me!_ Her smile faded and Twin Two glanced out the window, unperturbed.

The apartment buildings on both sides rose up, sky-blocking walls of dreary brick and grimed windows. The pristine black Cadillac was remarkably un-ghetto, but the Twins flicked out their razors idly as a subtle warning, and Kezia rolled her eyes unseen behind her replacement shades. As they entered the apartment complex, she wished terribly that she had her old ones, and would not be troubled to remove her shades indoors. However, the flickering weak lights in the elevator made her squint and place the glasses in the pocket of her cropped leather bomber,

Hearing the ding, they stepped out onto the eleventh floor, and Kezia's attention was immediately drawn to one sickly green door that seemed brighter, newer than the others down the hall. The bare hallway lamp glinted off of the brass 1123. The three Exiles swept towards the door in an incongruous triangle amid the surrounding litter and peeling paint. Kezia scuffed her worn boot on the well-trodden doormat and sighed, looking back to the Twins for the go-ahead.

Twin Two shook his head. "We can't go in because we're not h-" "Not her invited guests," Twin One interrupted, sending his counterpart a spark of annoyance through a shielded glance. "She asked for you only; our presence will only complicate things," he continued. Twin Two added, with a twinge of reassurance, "We'll wait outside right here for you." Kezia gave them a suspicious glance, but closed her eyes and turned back to the door.

She took a deep breath in preparation, and reached for the doorknob tentatively, first with her fingertips, as if she was scared it would burn her. And then she steeled herself, drawing her other hand out of her jacket pocket, and turned resolutely.

The door fell open for her, and a small androgynous child looked up at her from behind the gap. "Hello. You're a bit late, but she's waiting for you in the kitchen." The child offered the Twins a wan smile before letting Kezia in and closing the door securely behind her.

She was greeted by a collection of children accomplishing strange tasks in the living room. It seemed like the normal mind over matter sort of illusion, but these children appeared far from normal. They exuded a sort of calm control over their sense of reality, their wide eyes too large for their face yet already understanding everything they saw on an intimate level. And for some reason, that chilled her to the bone.

A small girl, pale with hair like frost fuzz, looked up from levitating building blocks and sent one over to Kezia, who caught it. K, it said with red painted on wood grain. She hefted it in her hand. "But it's so solid. How do you make it float?"

The child smiled at Kezia in an uncondenscending manner. "You can't make them sit on air, and you can't force them to float with your hand, that is, unless you throw it." Kezia squatted down in front of the girl, tilting her head in confusion. "Instead, you see that it has no mass in this world, and once your mind ceases to acknowledge that it has mass held in its hand, it's only natural for the block to rise."

Kezia tilted her head at the child and looked at the block in her hand, but she didn't decompose it into code. She focused not on the feeling of the block, but its very presence, the essence of a construct in the Matrix, the shell designed to fool human minds.

And she parted her lips and gasped quietly as the block floated upwards from her palm, rotating slowly.

A hand on her shoulder tapped her back into the moment. The block dropped softly back into her hand, and she handed it back to the girl with a faint smile before following the other child into the kitchen.

* * *

><p>She didn't know what she had expected the Oracle to look like, but it certainly hadn't been this. The elderly black woman turned away from the cookies cooling on the stove to face Kezia, a generous smile lighting up with aged wrinkles. "Well, would you look at that! It's been a while, dearie." Kezia couldn't help but smile and abandon her insecurities in the Oracle's warm embrace. The program smelled like the bakeries Kezia frequented, and also held a quaint smoky scent. The difference unsettled her briefly, but she saw only well-meaning in the program's eyes as she held Kezia out at arm's length and gave her a critical once-over. "Mmm. So <em>nice<em> to see you again."

"Have-have I met you? Before now?" Kezia asked, confused. The ease of their greeting was much different from the impersonal consultation she had imagined. The Oracle smiled mysteriously.

"I've met everybody; most of them don't remember the first time." She gestured to the table. "Come on, child, have a seat. We have quite a lot to talk about."

Kezia sat opposite the program, hands fidgeting with the zipper on her jacket. The Oracle lit a cigarette with a discreet whirr of her lighter, and looked at Kezia expectantly. "Well, go on. Ask it."

The girl was taken aback, and gave the program an apologetic look. "So do you get anything out of it?"

"Not in a human sense of chemistry, no. But it's an interesting motion. Conveys peace and ease. And yes, a certain sort of nonchalance. And now you're going to ask me…"

"Why do you care anymore? And I don't really like smoke." But the Oracle was already stubbing out the cigarette in the small porcelain ashtray before Kezia even requested.

"I care because it's my job. The rapport I establish with the inhabitants of the Matrix is invaluable to the Machines. They keep it running because humans let them." Kezia frowned and considered the statement.

"Um. I guess I can see that. My dad's explained to me how the Matrix works. And why he thinks it works. But apparently your views differ slightly?" The Oracle replied with a good-natured chuckle.

"Ah, yes. How is your old man doing? I can assure you my invitation for you was received with some strange looks."

"He's alright, I guess. He looks a little more stressed than before, but my mom's there for him and I'm not in his way too much." _Unless I'm busy getting shot,_ she thought darkly, with some embarrassment.

The Oracle gave Kezia a knowing smile. Kezia gave a half-hearted nod and left the topic there.

A silence enveloped them like the thin film of smoke.

"So…why am I here?" she began awkwardly.

The Oracle raised her eyebrows, the same genial smile never leaving her face. "You know why. You're here to figure out what to do with that information." Kezia sighed at the cryptic answer.

"I dunno. Weird things are happening."

"I know. The Merovingian and his wife care very much for you, Kezia." Kezia shrugged. "But you've found other pursuits and people."

Kezia had the good grace to flush slightly, thoughts of the Twins running through her head. The Oracle didn't seem to notice.

"It's sad, really," the Oracle continued. "Such a life ahead of you. Such an interesting life." She shook her head wistfully. "You know, some people see an interesting life as a curse."

"I don't believe in magic."

"Of course not. But your faith in machines is astounding."

"That's different. I know how machines work. I know what the code means when I read it. I can take them apart and fix them or destroy them completely."

The Oracle smiled broadly and leaned into the table. "Power is the ability to disassemble and repair. But what's to say something destroyed can't come back? The parts are still there, even if the new model's put together differently. And chances are, if you put it back together properly, some of the old functions will remain."

"Yeah, that's true. It's like creating a scrap pile."

"And if the scraps are layers of code that happen to build a sentient entity?"

"Scientifically it's impossible to replicate a person completely."

The Oracle raised a quizzical eyebrow. "You're missing something quite significant. I never said it had to be a person."

Kezia paused. "You mean, like a program?" Her brow knitted in confusion and sudden apprehension. "Like Smith."

"Bingo."

"But what about Neo?"

"A positive means nothing without a negative." Kezia pondered the Oracle's strange order of words.

"But which one's which?"

"Absolutes are not so easily defined within this world." The Oracle leaned back in her chair, regarding Kezia critically. "You've got a long way to go, but there's a very important you must make soon."

"Like how important?"

The Oracle sighed, cleaning her glasses momentarily. "Very important, I'm afraid. The consequences could reconcile the imbalance caused by the reformation of the forces, or it could possibly destroy the Matrix and renew the war between the Machines and the Humans."

Kezia gasped in disbelief. "B-but…I'm just the Mechanic. I wear my name on my shirt. This makes no sense. I would never be faced with anything that huge. My dad, maybe, but never me."

The Oracle's smile faded for the first time. She indicated the plaque hanging above her kitchen doorway. "You see that? It means 'Know thyself'. You may think your sense of identity is infallible, but you will be severely challenged in the coming weeks. And when you discover yourself, the truth, it is imperative that you make the best of this precious time. You have a lot of potential, but you and I both know that something is changing. You are more than you know, and you've got to establish that belief before you're ready to face the consequences."

Kezia pressed her hands to her face, trying to process the meaning. "I-…what consequences? I haven't done anything yet."

"You've already made the choice," the Oracle told her matter-of-factly. "You made that choice the moment you entered that alley to investigate. Curiosity killed the cat…"

"But satisfaction brought it back." So this had something to do with Smith. "What am I supposed to do with him? I don't even know if I'll see him again."

"You'll be getting your sunglasses back in no time, dearie," the Oracle reassured here, standing. "But I'm afraid we're out of time. Seems like there's always more bad news in the world." Kezia stood, pushing the chair neatly up to the table, and readjusted her leather jacket. The Oracle took Kezia's face in her callused warm hands and gave her a longing look. "I think you'll be just fine. You've got a good head and a good heart. They'll come in handy."

"Uh, thanks. For everything."

"Here," the Oracle lifted the tray of cookies to Kezia. "Take one. I promise it'll make everything feel better." Kezia grinned. _Cookies!_ "Take two more for your friends. I can imagine you have your ways of getting them to eat."

Kezia thanked the Oracle again, and met the Twins outside the door of the apartment, wishing she could stay longer with the wonderful old program and her delicious cookies and comfort.

Twin One simply said he couldn't drive with a cookie in hand, and Twin Two took his cookie by the fingertips hesitantly. Kezia shrugged and polished off her cookie, closing her eyes at the still-gooey chocolate chips, and began to nibble at Twin One's forsaken cookie as they headed for the elevator. For a moment, all was right in the world.

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><p>In the world outside, pixel rain was rushing down in roaring torrents from the static grey of the sky. Former Agent Smith stood stoically in the shadows of an alley, beside the brick wall of an apartment building on the opposite side of town. He stared from behind the stolen sunglasses, glaring at the passerby huddling under umbrellas on the other side of the street. He stood straight, as if he didn't feel the rain dripping down onto his head and face. One arm rested at his side, the comforting curve of a handgun pressed to the inside of his forearm. The other was raised to his head, his hand idly feeling his ear, where the earpiece, center of oppression, had been for so long.<p>

But he didn't even hear the static of the Matrix anymore. He couldn't smell the stench of those damn viruses called humans. His sense of entrapment, however, had been intensified since his waking. He had wandered, aimless. It was impossible to find Mr. Anderson in this place.  
>And in the end, all he had to go on was the word of a child. A virus child with strange powers. And the supposed "daughter" of the Merovingian program as well. Another intriguing incident.<p>

_Why do you persist, Mr. Anderson?_ For the first time, he found himself adding, _Why do I persist?_ The thought shook him, the mere presence of doubt awakened the terrible memories of that darkest night. He narrowed his eyes. Something was very different about him, and the change made him feel…vulnerable.

"Hey, buddy." Smith clenched his teeth at the raspy voice of a chainsmoker. He slowly turned his head to look to his left, at the bum huddled under the shelter of a box. "Yeah. Didn't I see you that other day with that girl? And the scary black guy."

"I highly doubt that, Mr. Monroe," was Smith's clipped response. He briefly contemplated removing himself from this human's vile presence. There were heavier things on his mind.

"Naw, I think it _was _you! Yeah, and you were having ice cream, right there down the road." The bum gestured towards the left outside the alley. "What are you, a lost g-man?"

Smith didn't dignify the question with a response. The bum rambled on. "I heard you was lookin' fer someone, and I can't really help you there. But that girl seemed to know what she was doin'. I heard of her father before. A real big man, or somethin'."

Smith couldn't help but give a cynical smirk. "So I have heard. But his reaches only extend to things unseen. The rogue program cannot control the obvious."

The bum looked up at Smith strangely, and then gave him a gap-toothed smile. Smith raised a disgusted eyebrow at the raggedy man's salute.

"Lookatchoo, man," the bum slurred. "All out in the rain. Jayzus, you could use someone like her."

Smith bit back a retort. An interesting thought wormed its way into his calculating mind, hatching a plan with astonishing clarity. There was more than one way to skin a certain Mr. Anderson. And now that he was, as they said, off the Grid, there was no reason why he too shouldn't participate in things unseen. "Yes, Mr. Monroe, I could. I coud _use_ someone like her."

The bum had a feeling he had just started something terrible by the way he spoke the words. A shudder ran through him, which he blamed on the chill from the rain. But the tall man's thin lips had pulled themselves taut in a joyless semblance of a smile, a positioning of muscles with nothing but sheer intent. It was inhuman, disturbing, Stuff straight from the uncanny valley. _I wish I could see his eyes. But maybe I don't want to know what's behind those sunglasses._ He almost sighed in relief when the man in the suit turned heel mechanically and began to walk off slowly in the rain, as if he was stalking prey.

He didn't know what made him say it. "Hey, man, nice shades, by the way."

Smith stopped. He turned to look down at the bum, head tilted in a condescending way of acknowledgement, the same cold halfsmile on his lips. "Thank you, Mr. Monroe. They were a gift." The expressionless voice held some unspeakable terror in its undercurrent.

Without blinking, Smith fired three quick shots into the man and reholstered his gun, hands swinging at his sides with the steady calibration of pendulums as he headed for the east side slums.

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><p>AN: There you have it. The plot thickens. I loved writing the Oracle. Please let me know if Kezia is heading too far into Marysueville. Thanks for reading! Please review.<p> 


	4. Chapter 4: Good Girls Go Bad

Hey y'all, sorry it's been so long. School and life got the better of me for most of the past year. Since the summer, I've been thinking about where I want this story to go, and I think I've got most of the plot outlined by now. But it's not going to be as direct as I originally planned, simply because this WIP is also an exploration of my style as a writer and storyteller.

Disclaimer: I don't own Smith, the Oracle, and other things from the Matrix franchise. But the concepts and characters I introduce are of my own independent creation. Enjoy!

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><p>Chapter 4: Good Girls Go Bad<p>

"Man, yo, fuck tha Oracle." Kezia chomped down on her slice of pizza, ignoring Luke's glance of disgust as she swallowed with difficulty. "No man- or hey, woman, for that matter, or program or whatever- controls me! Choices my ass. Consequences my ass. The lady makes good cookies, but that's all I'm taking from her."

"You sure have a way with words there, K." Luke tried to hide his smirk, sipping his soda. "But I'm glad that you aren't too bothered by her."

"Hell, I'm bothered. But what can I do about it? It's not like she can make me talk to Smith. I just want my goddamn sunglasses back."

Luke was stacking pennies on the dining table, giving Kezia a knowing look. "At the rate you're cursing, I'll be able to buy a new Benchmade in a week."

The kinetic energy from him moving the pennies reversed so fast that he barely had time to throw his hands up before they pelted at his face. "I can talk how I want, _mom_. I'm fucking pissed, gimme some space. And you'd better buy me new shades before you buy a new knife."

"It was your fault you gave them away. Just make new ones."

"But that means I have to go shopping. In a human store. And try things on. Like a human. And then I'd make you come with me anyways."

Luke rolled his eyes to mask his discomfort with the topic. "Tell you what." He morphed into the shadows under the table and reappeared in the chair next to her. She huffed when he threw an arm around her shoulder, but she leaned into the hug. "It's Tuesday night. And you know where Mero's gonna be."

"Yeah. It's Hel night."

Luke poked her nose, and she pretended to bite his finger. "Well, K, how's about we go raise some hell ourselves in a certain corner of this unsuspecting city?"

Her wicked expression of dawning glee made him regret nothing.

* * *

><p>She could feel her earrings shaking as the subwoofers infused every solid in the club with the bass beat. Luke moved like a series of time lapse photos with every colored strobe, his fluid shadowmancing revealed in all its glory. Kezia was glad she convinced him to get out of the trenchcoat and into jeans and a black leather vest. Even in her sheer top and short skirt, sweat was already beading on her forehead as she swerved between the bodies, hips swiveling and torso undulating, with an occasional slow toss of the head and trick of footwork. The nectar of house music resonated in her veins, carrying adrenaline and wiping away everything but the reverberating dance floor.<p>

Circles formed and dissolved around dancers and couples, and Kezia found herself face to face with a familiar pair of amber eyes. "Arch, you sneaky fucker!"

He pretended the music was too loud for him to hear her, and dipped in close, nipping her ear. "On guard as always, K-babe." She swatted at the white-blonde spikes that draped across his face and continued dancing, as he fell into rhythm behind her. "Haven't seen you around for a while."

She hummed at the feeling of his breath in her ear. Arch was one of the wingless ones, but he built a new name for himself, an Exile who felt more at home with dance and drugs than with guns and combat. Club Havin lived up to its name, and was the younger counterpart to her father's Hel, a place where Exiles reveled in their powers and partied hard with them.

Kezia closed her eyes briefly and saw the starbursts of light behind her lids. "Been busy," she called over her shoulder. It still surprised her that the club hadn't been raided by the Agents yet, but she supposed the reasoning was that it was better that these Exiles lived normal lives and only used their powers here. After all, until recently, the Machines had had much bigger problems to worry about.

Hands circled her hips, and she looked down at Arch's golden-tipped nails glimmering in the strobelight, knowing her blush wouldn't show in the darkness of the club. As a program herself, she supposed she had no business with petty human 'feelings', but they felt every bit as real as the clothes she was wearing (though that meant nothing depending on how you looked at it). So she just kept dancing, slowing her movements to a sensuous swerve, easily matched by the Exile behind her. She felt the stiff folds of his pressed shirt push against her through the thin fabric of her shirt, and she leaned into him as he murmured into her ear. "We've got some good stuff if you want to do a reading tonight."

She turned the thought over in her head, picking up the pace of her dancing as the music morphed into a more upbeat song. '_I knew that you were trouble, but I couldn't resist._' And the chorus roared through her, and she was nineteen and invincible, and it was so good. "Alright. Let's do it."

He kissed her on the shoulder and she shivered, feeling the smile on his lips. "Come on back, K-babe."

The crowd melted away from them as they made their way to the bar, where he ordered her a sex on the beach for a starter. She gave the bartender a sharp nod and took the fragile stem in her fingers, following Arch up the curved stairs to the back room. With a wave of his hand, Arch swept aside the heavy iron door like a wisp of smoke, and they passed easily through as the bar behind them melted into silence. Just a few steps behind them, Luke swatted at the wall as he too walked into the plush, dimly lit room. But as he made a move to follow Arch and Kezia, two suited Exiles stood up, too quickly to be mistaken for human, and positioned themselves in his way. He glared up at them, and Arch looked back at him, pulling a dazzling smile.

"Relax, O Dark One. It's just a reading. She's in good company." Luke took a single step back and crossed his arms, the tension never leaving his shoulders.

"Really, man, it's okay. I know you're strictly straightedge. Go back and dance, I'll be out of it for a while. Come get me if you wanna leave," Kezia called over her shoulder. Arch's arm pushed her into the back room, where ambient electronica buzzed around them and the wall melted seamlessly shut.

She flopped into one of the oversized basket chairs, as Arch took a seat in a ridiculously high-backed velvet armchair in another corner of the room. Another white-blonde Exile lounged in a pile of beanbags and pillows, puffing a cigarette.

"Hey Gabe, put that shit away," Arch suggested, and the other man gave a thin smile and stubbed out the smoldering tip on a nearby crystal ashtray.

He cut the newcomers a glance with honey colored eyes. "It's good to see you, K. How's it hanging?"

'It's alright. A bit busy. I've been busy." She sighed and curled up in the chair, hanging her head over the edge. "Arch told me you guys had some of the good stuff, and believe me, I need some of it."

"Gotcha covered." He tossed her a small plastic bag of white gel-capped pills, with some loose powder inside each. She took one out and swallowed it with a sip of her drink, and gave the bag back to Gabe.

Nestling into the chair, she downed the rest of her drink, leaning back and letting the alcohol simmer down her throat. Gabe and Arch both popped a pill as well, and the three of them sat back. Kezia felt the two of them staring at her body without lust, and knew that the drug must be kicking in for them. She was tempted to peer into their code to watch the transformation, but decided it would require too much effort, for an effect that would soon be simple for her.

"Like what you see?" she asked dryly.

"Oh, you know it babe."

"Watching you come up is the best part of coming up," Gabe agreed, pupils dilating as he continued staring, fascinated at the way her newly revealed code was changing. She grinned, blaming the flush in her cheeks on the alcohol.

And on the corners of her vision, the world was falling away and rushing up at her at the same time, and every time she blinked, more and more of her vision was turning to code, effortlessly. Time slowed as her senses started pouring in information, her brain processing an auxiliary. "Shee-yit, man…this stuff…"

"Good, huh?" Gabe drawled. She started to answer, and stopped when she realized she could see her words as she spoke them, reverberating across the room.

She was processing two entirely different inputs at once: the immediate reactions of her senses to her surroundings, and the streams of green code that told her what she was feeling. She both smelled and read the smoke as it diffused in the air, and the music was an experience that overlaid her sight like a gentle wave, a constant repeating while loop. With no more effort than a blink, she could zoom her vision across the panels of air and focus on the shimmer of code that governed a single antennae twitch in the moth that fluttered near the corner. It nearly hurt too much to try and take in the whole room. Even with her eyes shut, her eyes were telling her that all she could see was darkness, yet her mind was clearly seeing straight through the code of her eyelids to the programming of the room beyond.

"Dude." Her whisper dented the air like a ripple in a pond. She found endless enjoyment at watching that small word dissipate as it travelled, shutting her eyes to watch the progress of the code without the interference of the color codes.

A shimmer of code betrayed movement in Arch's corner of the room. She was dimly aware of the movement drawing closer, but her eyes were closed and she was staring at the programming that ran through her mind's eye, losing her senses to the music and the way that the sound wove itself in and out of the code.

Kezia felt Arch's weight settle into the chair next to her, and after a moment of indecision, readjusted her position and rested her head on his shoulder. He shifted, and she ended up in his lap, looking up at his subroutines and strands of meticulously coded hair.

"Well, hello there."

"Hey." She wanted to say something snarky to his smirking face, but couldn't muster up the malice. Her thoughts were lost in the information that continued trickling in. Instead, she looked beyond. "Dude, check out the ceiling."

The plaster and paint were smooth with no aberrations. But above it, the pipes carried the rush of water and air in rivulets of running code, and the shots of data and electrons along the wires left green afterimages, moving too quickly to process, even with the creeping pace of altered perception from the drug.

She giggled, the sound rippling up and disappearing into the endless code. "Man…I bet this is what the internet looks like."

Arch's quiet laugh reverberated in his chest and sent a green puff into the air. "Of course you'd say that." But he was looking down at Kezia instead of the ceiling that she found so mesmerizing.

She pretended not to notice for a long moment, focusing on the patterns of code she saw instead of the treacherous heat of his thighs that she felt through his pants and her thin shirt. And she licked her lips with a heightened sense of nervousness, barely realizing it, before she looked up and read the routines that comprised Arch, the classes and references just slightly altered by the drugs. Her mind dissected him in layers, parting the subroutines tenderly with awe, and she felt like she was undressing the infinite wardrobe that was Arch.

She paused before she got too far. She always felt strange when she read people. Even knowing that she couldn't manipulate their code, it felt too intimate, too wrong, like she was accessing variables outside her class. But reading Arch was incredible, seeing the neon against the abyss that defined him, as a personality and a wingless, a program and an exile. Or maybe it was just the drugs. Probably both.

The swift columns flashed down the contours of his face, representing every reflection of the light on his flawless skin, his amber eyes. She held her breath as she watched the running code governing the way his long eyelashes rebounded after a blink that seemed to take an eternity. "Beautiful," she breathed, blushing almost immediately afterwards. "I mean, the code, it-…well, I mean, not that you're not-…I…"

"You are quite the specimen, K." She could see the alcohol pulsing through his system, as he cupped the back of her head and bent down. Their lips met, and Kezia twitched at the electric contact, the foreign feeling of his lips on her smoothly marking the divide between the physical and the code.

He drew back, and she watched the surface of his skin flush as his blood vessels dilated, the shimmer of changing code running through his body. Her lips tingled, and she felt a sudden rush of heat spike downwards between her legs.

"Fuck." They both jumped at Gabe's quiet moan. Kezia had completely forgotten about him; he'd been so still in his corner of the room. But he'd obviously seen them kissing, and…oh Main. He had definitely witnessed the bolt of arousal that shot through her, as clear as if she'd announced it to him. "You two need to get a room or something."

Kezia read the arousal that wove through his code and laughed nervously. "Yeah." She started to shift away from Arch, who reluctantly slipped his arm off of her waist.

"Nah, don't worry about it. I, uh, I think I'm gonna go have a smoke. Outside." Gabe cleared his throat pointedly. "Maybe hit up the dance floor for a bit."

"You sure you can handle the dance floor?" Arch asked, squeezing his eyes shut and trying to clear his mind.

Gabe shrugged. "We'll see. Weirder things have happened." He placed one hand on the plaster and it dissolved, reappearing after he drifted through.

Kezia watched him leave, fascinated by the ripple of code that governed the behavior of the wall, the way his virtual touch interacted with the commands. She turned back to Arch and smiled lazily, watching the code dissipate the heat that radiated from his body. He leaned back in the chair and brought his fingers to hold a lock of her hair. From the corner of her eye, she observed his fascination as it slipped between his fingers, a slick black snake of code.

"Hey, Arch."

"Mhm?"

"That was pretty nice."

"Yeah."

She lifted herself back up to his lips, pausing again to savor the remarkable feeling of the boundaries of contact. A pulse of code ran down both their bodies. She laid back down and stared at her hand, a whimsical smile on her lips as she watched the drug mix with the alcohol in her bloodstream.

The music flowed and ebbed in languid waves. The two of them were quiet for a while, lazy but not tired, as the dreamy fascination with code kept them conscious. Kezia had had experience with human drugs, concoctions of chemicals on paper and in pills, and she preferred the script pills that were popular among the Exiles. They had absolutely no body load associated with coming up or coming down, and she could terminate the program at any time if she really wanted to. No need for the time sink of daytripping, or the next-day naps after pulling an all-nighter for the twelve hours of acid to finish washing through the depths of her mind. The high came up fast and sweet, and as long as she was in her right mind, it was easy enough to control.

She hadn't noticed when Arch took her hand, but it seemed to her now that their fingers had always been intertwined, the smooth brush of skin on skin a subconscious routine that she only barely recognized as involving more than her own body. She closed her eyes, and time folded away like the petals of a fast-blooming flower, falling and fluttering with her through the vast black space of the Matrix. The code rose up and around her, and she read a thousand sensations with a single blink, their afterimages buzzing under her skin.

Arch and Kezia shared platonic contact while they peaked; both of them were too far into their own heads to try and introduce a foreign party to their private ruminations. Gabe stole in and retrieved his lighter, and Kezia could barely muster up the intent to flick him the bird as he gave them a knowing smirk before parting through the walls again. At some point (she'd lost track far before then), Kezia remembered Luke dropping in, and she had nodded enthusiastically when Arch suggested she spend the night at his place. Luke took a while to become convinced, but eventually caved, with a death glare at Arch and a reminder to Kezia to contact her parents. Arch, despite his lanky frame and laid-back demeanor, was still a wingless, and Kezia knew that the Merovingian trusted the ancient Exiles over the far younger darkmages like Luke.

The effects had dimmed to a simmering at the edges of her vision when she finally stood up and made her way to the balcony. The haze of code lay translucent over her field of view, and it was taking more effort for her to concentrate on the code rather than the discrete objects. "Hey Arch, let's go look at the stars."

He slowly got up from the chair and sauntered over. "Be careful."

She scoffed. "Sure thing, _dad_."

"You aren't-" He cut himself off and broke into a transparent smile. "Nevermind. Just…don't give the Mero a new reason to hate me. It's bad enough that I'm being such a terrible influence on you." He slipped his arms around her waist and she leaned against the railing, half-watching and half-waiting on the occasional scan of car headlights from the street beyond the alley.

There was barely any warning, just a tinkle of breaking glass, and suddenly, Arch whipped around and shoved Kezia against the corner of the balcony railing as Gabe's body came hurtling through the plaster of the wall across the room.

"Exiles," the Agent at the front coolly acknowledged. Kezia saw the drug code drain from Arch's system as he flicked the killswitch in his head, and she did the same in her own body, feeling her skin lose its dreamy flush as the racing pulse of adrenaline replaced the rush and made her palms clammy and her head clear.

Gabe was standing now, brushing the dust off of his dark t shirt. "Whatever it is that you want, we don't have it. We're operating perfectly within the bounds of the agreement with the Mainframe."

"You are harboring a fugitive," the Agent droned, his dark sunglasses absorbing the dim light.

Arch instinctively moved to hide Kezia from view but the Agent simply quirked his head. "Not the human. We seek the anomaly."

"I'm not hu-" she started to protest with a halfhearted smile, but both Arch and Gabe shot her looks that made her press her lips shut. Confusion was beginning to coalesce more firmly in her head when a voice drawled from the newly destroyed wall that made her loathe to find its source.

"Agent Brown. A pleasure to meet you again." Smith stepped calmly over the ragged bits of drywall and insulation. "Long time, no see, I believe."

Agent Brown's expression was the closest to disgust as Kezia had ever seen on the police programs. "Virus."

"I prefer the term, 'a changed man'." His measured voice carried deliberate smugness. Watching them interact, Kezia shuddered; Smith, while somehow more human than Brown, was infinitely more unsettling with his robotic manipulation of every nuance that humans relished as unique to their species.

"We have orders for your termination."

"I'd certainly like to see you try."

Within seconds, the Agents' guns had fired their entire cartridges, every single bullet burying it into the wall behind Smith. But Kezia hadn't seen the Smith do the usual dodging. "Did he-.." she began to whisper at Arch, who shook his head slowly, brow furrowing.

Smith curled his lips into a thin smile. "No harm done," he observed with an air of false surprise. "You could say that I'm no longer...a part of your system. In fact," he continued, advancing with slow steps towards his former colleagues," what does having a system even matter, when the rules no longer apply?"

Smith gave them a pointed look, and suddenly the three Agents were frozen in place, straining. A throbbing vein sparked with electricity in Brown's forehead as he gritted his teeth against the force that held them still. "You...what are you doing..."

Smith plucked the earpiece out of Brown's ear and brought it to his own with a wicked smile. "Having a word with your superior."

Kezia focused her vision on the code, and saw only the thinnest streak of static flow down the earpiece before the Agents' faces contorted in pain. The noise of garbled static undermined the air for a moment, and then she saw the coded bodies vanish entirely.

Never before had she seen that happen to an Agent. Code didn't just disappear; it was rewritten or copied over or reverted, or cached for the archive records or possible reconstruction via one of the many backup subroutines that operated all over the Matrix. The only time she'd ever seen the entire existence of an entity become erased was when an Exile was reabsorbed into the Source, but even then, the nature of a being in the Matrix necessitated past versions and dependent references that would change the memories of anybody who had ever associated with that entity. By definition, nobody who ever witnessed the erasure of an entity would ever remember what had happened.

For that matter, why did she still remember what she had just witnessed? She furrowed her brow as she watched Smith carefully pocket the earpiece. "Did you just see that?" she asked, turning to Arch, but the platinum-headed Exile was still staring at the place where Smith had emerged from behind the shattered wall. A glance at Gabe confirmed that he, too, was standing still, unblinking, frozen.

Smith turned to Kezia, stepping soundlessly over to her. She drew the gun from her belt by instinct and fired twice at him, reading his code. Somehow, he was reading as a non-entity as the bullets simply passed through him. He had a physical form, yet he looked like another basic level program governing the laws of the Matrix, his subroutines hidden and blending in with the code around him. It was as if he was reaching for something in the depths of the Matrix, probing with his methods and trying to access something that she couldn't see.

"I'm not looking for a fight, Miss Smith."

She continued backing up onto the balcony, unconvinced by his unctuous smile. "You're going to get one anyways."

He stopped walking and sighed at her like he found her incredibly stupid, staring at her for a moment behind his shades. There was a high pitched whine, a shift in the code of the Matrix. A shift in her code. "Before we do this, I think you should understand that this is nothing…personal." She was pressed up against the railing by this point, and trying to lash out at him, but her limbs felt like lead moving through molasses, the crippling resistance making it too hard for her to even look down and try to revert back to an earlier version of herself.

"What-…" The word took her five seconds to croak out. He smiled at her grimly.

"Just understand that I need a…liason of sorts, someone to…carry me across certain thresholds, if you will." And with that, he straightened his tie, shifted out a crick in his neck, and sunk his hand up to the base of his fingers like a knife between her ribs with all the effort of flicking a speck of dust from his immaculate suit.

The pain laced itself around every bone in her body and tightened, cutting deep to the marrow as her lungs exploded in a gasp. She felt her insides drowning in ice, her limbs twitching as her legs gave way and she slipped down to the rusting sheet metal platform, slowed only by the searing upward resistance of Smith's hand still jammed in her chest. He was fading in her vision, and the cold was taking over her neck and jaw, higher and higher, until everything was closed off to the light and she lost her thoughts to the pain.


End file.
